Bill Maher and the Magic Negro Syndrome

Perception is reality. ~ Lee Atwater

Bill Maher has a problem. On Tuesday of this week, he tweeted this:-

Obama's pathetic: "the political culture blahblah..." - BLAME THE REPUBLICANS! Besides better politics it has the added virtue of being true

And on Wednesday, he tweeted this:-

Rick Perry says he's not sure if Obama loves his country and the response from President Wayne Brady is "I'll cut him some slack"? HIT BACK!

OK, I get it that Bill's less than pleased about the President. We know (because Bill never ceases to remind us at every opportunity) that he was the first celebrity-talking-head-pundit-until-he-says-something-that-draws-the-ire-of-the-viewing-audience-then-he's-only-a-comedian-political-commentator ever, ever, ever, in all this time, ever, on the Left to criticize the President.

And we know that Bill also remorselessly and ceaselessly (well, at least from 2007, when it became reasonably safe to do so with a Democratic Congress)chastised George Bush.

And we know that when Bill decided to criticize the President, he ended his snide and snarky critique with a heartfelt wish that Obama would be - yes - more like George Bush. Here's the clip, itself, to jog your memory:-



Keep in mind that this rant occurred in June 2009, not even five months after the Inauguration, and keep in mind that, not only did he he compare the President to Lindsey Lohan ("in the papers a lot, but not doing very much"), he also went on to say that, after less than six months, the President had failed to make real progress on health care, the banks and climate change. Keep in mind that the previous week, he'd chastised the Republicans for saying the exact same thing about Obama - basically, that he was always in the papers and on television.

But the final punch was the clincher:-

"What he needs in his personality is a little George Bush ... What we need to do is to marry the good ideas that Barack Obama has with a little bit of that Bush attitude and certitude."

The Bush swagger, the alpha male, the codpiece moment.

Five months into the first year of Obama's administration and Bill's wanting this?

Well ...

Keep in mind what else happened in Bill's tranche of the entertainment world that spring:-

- Jay Leno left The Tonight Show (for the first time).

- Conan O'Brien debuted as host of The Tonight Show.

- Stephen Colbert broadcast a week's worth of his programs from Iraq, with special satellite appearances by the President and also Bill's latest man crush, George Bush.

- Jon Stewart eviscerated Jim Cramer on The Daily Show.

Everyone was talking about all of these things, but no one was talking about anything Lil'Boy Bill had done or said, until he said this.

That started the snarkball rolling, ending the year with Bill referring to the President as "Barry" and then pushing the pejorative meme of him being no different from Bush. (Pardon me, but wasn't Bill one of the biggest big mouths in 2000, trolling the country with the message that Bush and Gore were one and the same and that we should all vote for Nader? How well did that work out?)

Looks as though Bill fell prey to the disorder affecting most of the EmoProgs, resulting from the election of Barack Obama: Magic Negro Syndrome. Elect the cool black man, and he'll wave the magic wand which extends naturally from his manicured fingertips, and his wish is your command. Free healthcare for all? No problem (even though he never uttered a word about the fabled "single-payer", there are people abounding who fell under his magic spell and would swear on their lives that he promised that and more). Banish the bankers to the nethersphere of hell? Done.

The Magic Negro Syndrome assured its victims that the first African-American President not only was faster than a speeding bullet at righting the economy and putting people back to work with six-figure salaries, not only was he more powerful than a locomotive at getting whatever progressive legislation the EmoProgs demanded through a recalcitrant Congress, he was able to leap tall orders of legislation past Congress in a single bound and ensure that he got everything he wanted, when he wanted it and all within the requisite 100 days.

Yep ... a lot of people believed that. A lot of people totally tuned out everything Candidate Obama said, instead, treating him the way a gaggle of adolescents would treat the ubiquitous rock star on whom they had a teenage crush - projecting all their hopes, beliefs and desires on a veritable tabula rasa, which only existed in their brainful of latent teenaged kicks.

But Bill Maher knew better. This, and everything which ensued thereafter, was all about Bill and the promotion of Bill's brand.

So in the interest of "Bill's Brand," his craven self-promotion, let's look at some of the memes Bill introduced in the past three years or so, which are taken as irrefutable gospel truths for the EmoProgs ... because, ya know, Bill, you're just so ke-wel and so funny and so sexy, speaking all that truth to power, without ever facing power down in the face ... because, ya know, it's just so easy to lob missiles from a distance rather than meeting the danger right up front ... Oops ... that sounds like something Bill said once ... Oh, yes ... I remember now ...



Anyway, let's look at some of the deliberate lies Bill's propagated about the President, lies which his abject followers now insist are truths:-

1. Obama is needy and desperate to make friends with Republicans who wouldn't wipe their handmade designer shoes on him. In fact, he has a constant need to reach out and make friends with Republicans.

Rather rich, coming from someone who regularly pals around with Ann Coulter, Darrell Issa, Jack Kingston, Bill Frist, P J O'Rourke and Arianna Huffington. Even richer, that a regular guest on his program is Andrew Breitbart, whom he regularly protects from panel onslaughts.

In point of fact, the "need" the President feels to "reach out" to the Republicans, from the very beginning, resulted from the fact that he had to do so. The Democrats have only hit the magic number of 60 in the Senate for a grand total of 2 months, in 2009, when Al Franken was finally certified as Senator. Prior to that, for the big stimulus vote, the President needed Republican support. In January 2009, there were 56 Democratic Senators and 2 Independents who caucused with the Democrats. One of those Independents was Joe Lieberman. That should tell you a lot. Al Franken wasn't certified until June 2009. Ted Kennedy was ill at that time, so that brought the number of actual Democrats down to 55. They needed at least 3 Republicans to cross the aisle to vote for the stimulus package.

That's why the gals from Maine were courted so assiduously, that's why the stimulus amount was reduced significantly - to attract their support. In the end, the whole thing passed by one vote, and they managed to garner a defection from the Dark Side, when Arlen Specter came back to his roots. So in June 2009, they actually managed to have 60 Democrats in the Senate, until Ted Kennedy died in August of that year. Now, also, consider that the Democratic make-up of the Senate includes the likes of Ben Nelson, Mary Landrieu, Kent Conrad, Max Baucus and Joe Manchin.

Now fast forward to November 2010. Bill's constant denigration of the President results in hoardes of his sheeple sulking out the vote. Result? A Republican House. Divided government means negotiation and compromise between the two parties. Bill Clinton had to do it. So did Reagan. And Nixon. Nothing new there, but with Obama, it's forbidden. Oops ... forgot. The Magic Negro can hypnotise his opposition into fulfilling his every demand. Or else, he just goes "gangsta" - you know, the way Negro men mostly are, according to Bill.

2. The President is a terrible negotiator. He's weak. He caves to Republican demands. He's wimpy and wussy. He has no spine.

Like every other "Progressive," Bill whined and moaned about the extension of the Bush era tax cuts, and like every other "Progressive," he failed to see what the President got in exchange for those tax cuts. The rich and the Republicans got everything they wanted, but did they?

Charles Krauthammer certainly wasn't happy with the compromise. He called it the swindle of the year, you know, similar to the way Obama was accused of shaking down BP for compensation money. Bill failed to realise that, in exchange for a two-year extension of the tax cuts, the President obtained many measures that ensured an easier life for the long-term unemployed, the poor and the working poor; but Bill, like most rich, white and affluent "Progressives" never thinks of that demographic, and when he does, he has to have an antiseptic bath. But that doesn't include all the rest of the Lame Duck legislation he was able to effect, because the tax cuts had been dealt with - things like DADT, the First Responders' Health Bill, and START. Bill doesn't consider any of those things.

Now the latest gnashings and wailings and accusations of weakness come in the face of the debt ceiling negotiations. I don't think Bill understands the intricacies of the compromise effected here, so I'll let Bob Cesca tell him how, instead of John Boehner getting 98% of what the GOP wanted, it was another sleight-of-hand effected by the President.

While everyone is fixated on how terrible this debt-ceiling deal is for Democrats, If one pauses long enough to really analyze the details and all of their implications, one finds that, in the long term, this deal is actually wildly in favor of the President’s position.

The truth is — there actually is revenue included in this deal, and here I will briefly defer to Ezra Klein:

In a presentation to his members, Boehner says (pdf) that the rules governing the committee “effectively [make] it impossible for Joint Committee to increase taxes.” Specifically, he’s arguing that using the Congressional Budget Office’s “current-law baseline” makes tax increases impossible, as that baseline assumes the expiration of the Bush tax cuts, and so, if you touched taxes at all, you’d have to raise taxes by more than $3.6 trillion or the CBO would say you were cutting taxes and increasing the deficit.

Confused? That seems to be the point. Boehner is misleading his members to make them think taxes are impossible under this deal. But make no mistake: The Joint Committee could raise taxes in any number of ways. It could close loopholes and cap tax expenditures. It could impose a value-added tax, or even a tax on carbon. The Congressional Budget Office would score all of this as reducing the deficit under a current-law baseline. The only thing that wouldn’t reduce the deficit is going after part of the Bush tax cuts. That means they’re likely to go untouched in this deal.

In case you don’t understand — allow me to elaborate.

John Boehner is selling the current CBO baseline to his caucus to pass this bill, and the current baseline includes an expiration of the Bush Tax Cuts. The only way for the Bush Cuts to be extended is if the “super congress” committee offsets it with tax hikes or tax reform in other areas. Going after the Bush Tax Cuts in the committee would not count as reducing the deficit, because the baseline already assumes they will expire.

John Boehner knows this, but most members of his caucus and, admittedly, many members of the Democratic caucus don’t realize it. I didn’t put two and two together myself until late last night.

If you view this deal from the perspective that there is a guarantee the Bush Tax Cuts will expire, then suddenly the deal swings wildly in favor of President Obama.

The president offered John Boehner a 4:1, cuts:revenue deal, but what he ended up getting instead is a 1:2, cuts:revenue deal.

The Bush Tax Cuts account for roughly $3.7 trillion dollars in additional revenue over 10 years. The spending-cuts tentatively agreed to in the deal account for only $2.7 trillion dollars over 10 years. This means there is $1 trillion more dollars in revenue contained inside the deal over 10 years than there are spending cuts.

Furthermore, the spending cuts contained inside the bill do not come into effect until 2013, after the Bush Tax Cuts expire, meaning the revenue and cuts come into effect at roughly the same time.

If the rabid members of John Boehner’s caucus realized this, they would probably be calling for his head.

It’s no coincidence that President Obama came out last night and bluntly said this is not the deal he wanted. It’s no coincidence that John Boehner and Eric Cantor both told their caucus that President Obama “caved.” They have to say this, because if it appears that President Obama got anything in the deal, then suddenly it can’t pass the House of Representatives. There is nothing they hate more than giving the president a victory, so it has to appear as if he got nothing, and they have been pretty convincing.

President Obama knew this would look bad for his administration in the short term, but he took that risk in exchange for winning further along down the road. As I mentioned above, none of this policy actually comes into effect until 2013. Not even the spending cuts. Only 1% of the spending cuts will be felt in 2012.

This deal masterfully accomplishes the task of kicking the can down the road for the Republicans without actually appearing so unless you really dig deep into it, and it leaves most of the details up to the next session of Congress beginning in January of 2013.

We all owe the president a great deal of respect for being willing to take the political hit in the short term to save us in the long term.

3. Obama's a failure. He didn't do what he said! Waa-waaa-wahhh!


Bill says he didn't close Gitmo. Not true. He signed the Executive Order, and then the fiscal and organisational responsibility for closing the place - dealing with the cumbersome logistical duties of moving and re-housing the inmates there until they were brought to trial on the mainland - reverted to Congress. Ninety-four Senators voted against funding to close Gitmo, including Al Franken and Bernie Sanders. Then, when attempts were made by the Department of Justice to effect a civil trial in New York City for Khaled Sheikh Mohammed, Chuck Schumer and Kirsten Gillibrand objected. Attempts to move the trial to Pennsylvania were met with strenuous objections from Arlen Specter. A third attempt to have the trial in Virginia was met with objections from James Webb and Mark Warner. All these Senators were Democrats.

And in case Bill's in any doubts about what exactly the President has achieved during his first Administration, he can take a look here. This site will explain the President's achievements in words Bill will succinctly understand. I would suggest he study those achievements, because another lie he's been propagating is that Obama doesn't stand for any Democratic ideals, but then Bill doesn't give a rat's ass about people like the lady for whom Lily Ledbetter Fair Pay Act was named. It doesn't surprise me that Bill ignores legislation like this; Lily Ledbetter probably bores him the way it bores other Progressives.

The Matthew Shepherd Hate Crimes Act? Repeal of DADT? Instructing the Department of Justice not to defend DOMA in court appeals? Those aren't Democratic ideals?

And Bill has the audacity of a dope to state blatantly that the President is pathetic, because he refuses to round on Republicans exclusively in apportioning blame on government legislative intransigence. Bill needs reminding that the President wanted the tax cuts repealed for the wealthy in September 2010, as a lede into the campaigns before the Midterms. Harry Reid and Russ Feingold, with Nancy Pelosi's support, refused to consider this. And during the actual tax cut negotiations, the President tabled the idea of having the Lame Duck Congress vote early on the debt ceiling rise, but that, too, was refused by Harry Reid, who wanted the incoming Republican House to own the responsibility for raising the debt ceiling too. And that worked out so well, didn't it?

Fair dos, to the President for rounding on his own version of Harry Truman's "Do Nothing" Congress; and if Bill wants to moan about Obama not tackling jobs - well, besides the fact that the President doesn't legislate, there are some forty-odd jobs' bills being deliberately held up in the House now, all of which were introduced by Democrats.

That's because that certain demographic of voter from the Left, devoid of critical thinking ability who listen to the self-promoting likes of Bill, Ed Schultz and Arianna Huffington, as well (of late) to concern trolls like Joan Walsh, stayed home; and because of that, we got a Republican House.

So why should the President give succour and sustenance to people who've never had his back, but who they expect to cover theirs when the going gets rough?

As for Bill, puerile attitude is on display in the following clip. All it took was for the bumbling, ineffectual President Sanford and Son, a President who didn't conform to Bill's standard of "blackness," to kill one Osama Bin Laden and this response was elicited:-




In praise of one black ninja gangsta President - in fact, week after week, when he's not talking about Sarah Palin's stupidity, he never ceases to remind the audience of the colour of this President's skin. It's like a weird word-association game: "Black-Obama" ... black-Obama-wussy ... black-obama-spineless ... black-obama-caving.

But that's ok, Bill. We know the cool kids are chasing Ron Paul's fire engine in the run up to election year, and you've always wanted to be a part of the in crowd. Pallin' around with Ron and Rand will now give you opportunity to be as racist as you want, considering they're backed by Stormfront, as well as the Kochs, who have close links with the Nazis as well.

Even if your new man-crush, Ron, doesn't make it all the way to the White House, you can live with Rick Perry, who's pledge to lower taxes would fit right in with the current little tax trick you're playing on Jerry Brown at the moment. Besides, President Perry is much better for your brand of comedy. He'll get more laughter from your audience, who won't be forced to squirm under your pithy references to President "Wayne Brady." The disaffected Left will wonder why so many people voted for this clown. Gee, it must be racism, huh? It would never occur to them that someone like Perry might stand a chance to win, because they stayed home.

But I'll leave the last word to a Facebook friend, Nia Jones, who has your number pegged, after reading your insulting tweets about the President of the United States.

Folks like Maher dont get clever slights like this. He has a steryotypical view of black men and is pissy because president Obama like most black men dont fit his sterotype, so they get mad and say stupid shit.

That, Bill Maher, is proof that you're not only an undermining ratfucker, but a racist as well.

So toddle off with your buyer's remorse, little man, and your disappointment that your vote in 2008 didn't secure, for you, the mythical Magic Negro, but just a Negro. In the meantime, here's a little song to help you over the disappointment of all your man crushes - from Carter to Clinton to Nader to John Edwards - and by the way, I've got a bet on how long it is before you actually use the real hardcore racist n-word on air in reference to the President. Not long, I'll wager.

Lee Atwater would be proud of you. You've proven, beyond doubt, that for some people, the sheeple variety, whatever they perceive becomes the undoubted truth for them.

Lil' Boy Bill Eats His Foot

This morning, I kicked a foul-mouthed woman off my Facebook page. She was a totally unreconstructed PUMA, who posted this article from the UK broadsheet, The Telegraph.

I've nothing against foul mouths. I can swear with the best of them and in four languages. Hell, I live in Britain, where foul mouths are created at birth; but she was presenting the information given in this article as Gospel fact, when it was exactly what I called it: bullshit.

I pointed out to her that The Telegraph was the official mouthpiece of the Conservative Party (read: Republicans, the way they used to be). It stood for the England of flowery meadows, quaint little towns full of Tudor houses, and cricket on the village green. In other words, white Britain - the same white Britain where the sun never set on its empire of oppressed brown and black people.

She was quick to point out to me that I didn't know what I was talking about. (Really? I've only lived in England for 30 years with a husband who's worked directly for every Prime Minister from Maggie to Gordon Brown. I think I would know a little bit more about that newspaper and its agenda than she).

But n-o-o-o-o-o-o, as the late John Belushi would say. She had to inform me that no less than The Huffington Post, Salon, and Bill Maher said the same as the article: That Democrats were tanking on Obama, that they didn't think he would win. The article even quoted Bill Maher as having buyer's remorse re supporting the President.

And those people, this woman pointed out smugly, all had brains.

Well, so do I; and better brains than they. They just have more money, a lot of which has been made off the stupidity of people like this talking-point PUMA.

First, we all know about the proprietor of The Huffington Post, Her Serene Highness Queen Ratfucker Omnipotent of Medialand and how she ratfucked the deluded Progressives into thinking she was their friend; but if this woman thinks the Media Whoreanna is a friend of Hillary's, she's sadly mistaken. And as she reads HP and takes its word as truthful, I suggest she check out this article, or this one.

And Joan Walsh has been rooted our for her white privilege and racist slips since Ta-Nehisi Coates started calling out her behaviour in early 2008. You can check out Joan's articles here and here, with TNC's rejoinders here and here.

The person who values Joan's talking points can even see here that Joan's still conflicted on racial issues and still in denial about her problem.

Not that she would be convinced by any of this. I got the impression that this particular woman loved Hillary, loved Bill even more, and just like Harriet Christian, considers the President of the United States to be just an "inadequate black man" who displaced an entitled white face.

So the banished person also is taking Bill Maher as an expert voice on this as well? That's as reliable as asking the Pope to bless an abortion. Bill follows political fashion. When it was OK for everyone to criticize George Bush openly* (*meaning after he won his second term and effectively became lame duck), Bill led the charge. Prior to that, his jokes were lame and he actually supported the Iraqi surge. But Bill's a moral coward, and he'd already been rendered unemployed once during Bush's tenure because of his mouth.

First, during the primary campaign in 2008, Bill and his bumchum, Chris Matthews, discussed both Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, before rounding on Hillary's problems. Matthews was often criticized for his overtly sexist remarks concerning Clinton's campaign, whilst Maher, earlier in the year, had referred to her as by the c-word:-



Hold Bill's "orange juice and gin" remark in your mind now.

Here's Bill in 2010, on ABC's This Week, where, during a discussion about immigration, interjected his opinion about Republicans and racists and how they're related:-



Not all Republicans are racist, but if you are racist, you're probably a Republican!

Yet, later that same month, when Anderson Cooper posited that Islam was a religion of peace, Bill blew off on Islamic violence as par for the religious course.

Later,in October 2010, he actually expresses fear that Islam is taking over the world and wonders if that makes him racist. (Actually, Bill, that exposes your prejudice and intolerance, which are, technically, not supposed to be liberal or progressive traits, although we know that they can be.



But in between these two incidences, we had this remark about the President, which is not only ignorant, it's distinctly whiffy:-



Blogging on Loonwatch.com, the blogger Emperor, spoke about a confrontation earlier this year on Bill's show, when Bill got into an argument with Tavis Smiley about women's rights in the Middle East, and presented some details as facts which, clearly, were not. I leave it to Emperor to set the record straight:-

How long will Bill Maher get a pass on his racism and anti-Muslim Islamophobia? Is it acceptable because the targets are Arabs and Muslims and because Maher is a comedian from whom outrageous things are expected?

On his last show Bill Maher went on a speel undermining the Democratic character of Revolutions sweeping across the Arab world. Amongst his ludicrous statements he claimed “women can’t vote in 19 of 22 Arab countries,” that “women who have dated an Arab man, the results aren’t good,” that “Arab men have a sense of “entitlement,” etc. He also went onto forward the argument that “we are better than them,” justifying it by implying he is not a “cultural relativist.”

No, Bill might not be a “cultural relativist” but he sure sounds like a “cultural supremacist.” His factual accuracy about the Islamic and Arab world is akin to Robert Spencer’s. It is patently false that “19 of 22″ Arab states don’t allow for women to vote, a brief trip to Wikipidea would have disabused him of that false fact:

Women were granted the right to vote on a universal and equal basis in Lebanon in 1952[46], Syria (to vote) in 1949 [47] (Restrictions or conditions lifted) in 1953 [48], Egypt in 1956[49], Tunisia in 1959 [50], Mauritania in 1961[51], Algeria in 1962 [52], Morocco in 1963 [53], Libya [54] and Sudan in 1964 [55],Yemen (Partly)in 1967 [47] (full right) in 1970 [56], Bahrain in 1973 [57], Jordan in 1974 [58], Iraq (Full right) 1980 [57] Oman (Partly) in 1994 and (Fully granted) 2003 [59], and Kuwait in 2005 [57].

The reality, (what is lost on Maher) is that even though nearly all Arab states allow for voting for men and women, their votes didn’t matter in the autocratic kleptocracies that littered the Middle East, and this is what Arabs — men and women — have been fighting against these past few months. It seems Maher just can’t handle all the myths he’s been pushing being shattered.

Bill Maher goes onto talk about how Arab men are bad spouses and boyfriends, to buttress his points he brings up “anecdotal” evidence and his opinion that Arabs have a “sense of entitlement.” How does Bill know? Has he dated Arab men? This is one of those things that is so ridiculous and patently unsubstantiated that it is beyond being laughable, you almost cringe with embarrassment for how stupid it makes Maher look.

Maher also seemed to use “Arab” and “Muslim” interchangeably, perhaps not knowing that a significant number of Arabs are not Muslims. While there are certainly problems in the Middle East and the Muslim world regarding the treatment of women, Maher judges Arabs and Muslims by their lowest common denominator. Ignoring countries such as Turkey, Indonesia, Malaysia, India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Tunisia, Lebanon, Jordan and others that have progressive legislation regarding women and which have had women presidents, prime ministers, parliamentarians, business leaders, sports icons, journalists, etc.

At the end of the day Maher needs to have someone on his show who can push back against the myths that he indulges in and propagates. Someone of the caliber of As’ad Abu Khalil or Juan Cole might be a good start.

And, finally, here's a clip from his March 2011 interview with Rep Keith Ellison, where he literally attacks Ellison on Islam's message, along with a stereotypically racist quip about where Ellison was converted.



So, for my banished Facebook PUMA, I'd think twice before I cite either Huffington or Walsh or certainly, Maher as impeccable sources of imparting fact-checked information. Huffington has her own agenda (ratfucking and the return of the Republicans) as does Walsh (Hillary running for President and replacing the "inadequate black man"). Bill's agenda is just to follow whatever the political fashion is, but like Walsh, his racism in general and his intolerance of Islam in particular are distinctly at odds with the Leftwing credentials he pushes relentlessly.

Insert foot in mouth and shove.

Our (Political) Gang 2011

Remember the old film shorts from the 1930s "Our Gang?" Ever wonder who the Our Gang crew would grow up to be if they went into politics? Well ... Let's pretend a reality television show was produced entitled OUR (POLITICAL) GANG 2011 ... Starring ...

Michael Moore as Spanky

Dennis Kucinich as Alfalfa

Joan Walsh as Darla

Bill Maher as Skippy

Tavis Smiley as Stymie

And ...

Cornel West as Buckwheat

Special Guest star

Arianna Huffington as The Wicked Witch of the West

The Fraud That Is Bill Maher

Would the real Bill Maher please stand up? Who is he? I want to know. Is he a comedian or a political pundit? Is he a Progressive (as he claims he is), a libertarian (as he’s been on record in the past as saying) or a closet Republican (he did vote for Reagan the second time around and for Dole in 1996)? Is he a bona fide intellectual or a dilettante? An original thinker or a dedicated follower of fashion? Is he an atheist or is there a tryptiched altar in his bedroom, complete with votive candles and a picture of the Sacred Heart of Jesus?



This is the man responsible for introducing the likes of Ann Coulter, Laura Ingraham, Grover Norquist and Christine O’Donnell into mainstream America. He counts Coulter amongst his best friends – one of two, I imagine, because media whore and Queen Ratfucker, Arianna Huffington is the other one. He lambasts the corporatocracy which has taken over America, yet bows from the waist in open admiration at Huffington’s defection to that realm of power and glory (not that she ever left off trying to break down the doors anyway).



He describes himself as a Progressive, but he openly supports the death penalty and racial profiling. He is anti-union and crossed the picket lines during the writers’ strike to carry on with his show. After the strike ended, he made it a stipulation that any writer working on his Real Time show not belong to a union. He is virulently against the National Endowment for the Arts. Whilst he was vocal in his criticism of George W Bush, he lauded him for the Iraqi surge. He’s a fervent defender of Israel.



If any other self-proclaimed “Progressive” openly claimed those credentials, he’d be immediately lambasted as a Blue Dog Dem, and that’s being kind. Those credentials are solidly Republican.



During the health care debates throughout 2009, Bill pushed the envelope in favour of the fashionable “public option,” even advocating Medicare-for-All when he interviewed Congresscritturs pushing that meme; but at the end of that season, in a lengthy interview with Bill Frist, he blurted out that he didn’t trust the government to administer any sort of health program, before launching into an anti-vaccine argument with Frist, a practicing physician, that belied his self-promoted reputation as a secular ratiionalist worshipping at the altar of science. The week before that episode, he engaged himself in a totally ludicrous argument with Jeff Toobin, criticizing what he called “Western medicine” and insisting that people left the United States dying of cancer for alternative treatments and lived to tell the tale.



In fact, Bill seems far cozier in the company of some of the most notorious conservative politicians and commentators, Frist included. Coulter, as mentioned, is his BFF; and the criminally-challenged Congressman, Darrell Issa is a frequent guest on Real Time, as is Dana Loesch, Matthew Continetti and the infamous Andrew Breitbart, whom he fails to challenge on any point and actually appears to protect.



In fact, it was the conservative writer, S E Cupp, who perspicaciously sussed that Bill’s strident atheism didn’t really appear to be non-belief at all, but rather, an anger at God. In fact, it’s only recently that Bill’s actually outed himself as an atheist. Until 2009, when Richard Dawkins awarded him his coveted Atheist of the Year award, Maher identified himself more as a questioning agnostic, saying that atheists were just as uncertain in their non-belief as fundamentalist Christians were in theirs. He actually admitted to believing in a higher power, just one which wasn’t the traditional view of God as the ultimate father figure.



The “Progressive” Bill Maher has shown himself openly queasy about Islam and Muslims, in general. In an interview with Anderson Cooper, in 2010, he quipped that, of course, Islam was a religion of peace. “There’s a piece of you over there and another piece over there, and that’s after the suicide bombers have struck.”



He was openly rude and blatantly disrespectful to Congressman Keith Ellison, one is Muslim.



And then, there are the remarks about the current President of the United States, referring to him disparagingly as “President Sanford and Son,” and lamenting the fact that Barack Obama wasn’t his idea of a real black President, one who would use ghetto-style language and intimidation techniques, even to the point of showing his Cabinet and Congress a gun tucked inside his suit jacket.



I’m positing that Bill Maher is a fraud, and anyone who looks at him either as an intelligent and fearless voice in the pundit community or an equally brilliant satirist, needs to wake up, smell the coffee and learn to think for themselves.



This is a man who follows the fashion of the easy money trail, rather than owning up to common sense principles that he’s afraid to avow publically because it would mean swimming against whatever the currently fashionable tide is concerning a popular topic of discussion or criticism.



He’s proven this with his attitude toward President Obama.



Bill was raised in a Democratic household, although now he doesn’t describe himself as a Democrat, and he’s too afraid to admit that he is, at heart, probably more of an old-style moderate Republican. It’s not unusual for someone to start life as a Democrat and then become a Republican – like John Boehner. Conversely, Hillary Clinton was formerly a Republican who switched parties along the way.



No, Bill’s a political starfucker. He leans Democratic when it’s cool to do so, and punches the Republicans when it’s the flavour of the moment to do that as well. And when the radical chic, whom he emulates and longs to join, find a trendy independent with a bone to pick, they push his meme too. Hence, Bill, along with those other two politically astute self-promoters, Michael Moore and Katrina vanden Heuvel, sold their followers on the message that it was all too hip to back Ralph Nader in 2000, because Bush and Gore represented the same corporate animal.



There you go. Bill enabled George W Bush, but then Bush gave him some great comedy moments and, no doubt, lined his pockets with money to ferret away from the California tax authorities, so who’s complaining? Not Bill.



Now we’re seeing Bill sell his dismay about Obama with everyone from Piers Morgan to Lawrence O’Donnell. I remember when he started this meme, and I remember the background to it, and it’s the background which, I believe, is sincere and incongruent to the undermining message he’s promoted on and off since then, which has done enough harm to the President, but serves only to enhance Maher’s own publicity. I don’t have any problem with self-promoting hacks, but I do have a problem with people who hang on their every word and follow them to the point that they convolute themselves in contradiction.



At the end of Bill’s 2008 season, the week after the Election, Bill – who was genuinely pleased with an Obama triumph – sat at his panel’s table and discussed with Jon Meacham how exactly they thought Obama would govern as President. Bill acknowledged that Candidate Obama had run as a centre-Left pragmatist and admonished Progressives not to get caught up in the hope that he would be able to pursue an exclusively Progressive agenda. He even warned that the Republican party, although defeated, was anything but down and out and would be an obstructive force with which to reckon.



He and Meacham then agreed that Obama would have no recourse but to govern from the centre and would have to seek bipartisan support from the GOP for certain measures. Bill even cited Mario Cuomo’s famous quote about politicians campaigning in poetry and governing in prose.



So far, ao astute. So sensible.



Fast forward to February 2009, and Bill’s first program after his hiatus. He took a break from comedy in his monologue, to remind his audience of the immense obstacles, especially with the economy, facing this President. He was right in saying that Obama was essentially the black man brought in to clean up the mess made by the entitled white man. He was actually facing the worst economic situation since Roosevelt’s first term, but then Bill reminded people about the public in Roosevelt’s time, the so-called Greatest Generation, of which Bill’s parents (and mine) were a part.



Bill reminded his llisteners that the President had said that this would take time, that he couldn’t do it without the public’s help, and that was reasonable.



“I hope,” he said, “that now we’ve got our man in the White House, that people are just going to sit back and expect him to perform miracles and right this situation right away, because that’s not the way it’s done. It’s gonna take some time, and we all have to tighten our belts. But, you know, I’m not so sure this generation is able to do that, not like our parents’ generation.”



He went on to explain how his parents had lived through a Depression and a World War. They were suffering when Roosevelt asked them to tighten their belts even more during a real Depression, and they came off that, only to be asked to make sacrifices during a war. They got on with it and did what was asked; but he was right to single out the immaturity of people in present times. He actually ended his spiel by wryly reminding people that this wasn’t a matter of just cleaning house, and the President wasn’t that sort of servant.



Again, brilliant summation.



By the third week in June, he was castigating the Republican party for moaning about Obama always being on television; by the fourth week in June, 2009, Bill abruptly changed tack, in one week: Now he was moaning about Obama being on television so much that he’d done nothing since he’d become President. He seemed to enjoy being in front of the camera too much. Why, the only thing he’d accomplished in the first 100 days was getting a dog. Where were the WPA-style jobs’ programs, where was healthcare? And then the killer line: Why couldn’t Obama be more like Bush in ramming legislation through? Why couldn’t he have more of the Bush swagger?



Such bodacity garnered Bill umpteen appearances on talk show after talk show and the floodgates on Obama-bashing opened in earnest. As time went by, Bill loved to remind people that he was the first political commentator who dared to criticize the President. By the end of that year, he was snarkily referring to him as “Barry,” emulating the pithy and petty old white men of the Tea Party he disdained. When the President fulfilled a campaign promise of implementing a surge in Afghanistan, Bill tweeted indignantly that Obama was now “just like Bush.”



This carried on to a lesser degree – racist comments aside – during 2010. At least Bill had retained enough of his integrity to realise that 2010 was a Midterm election year, and that the Democrats were in danger of losing out. But in the aftermath of the Midterms and after the tax cut compromise, he took to the airwaves on Fareed Zakaria’s program to label the President a “pussy.” He’s since called him that once again in recent weeks.



In fact, the only time the President has received any approbation from Bill Maher this year was when Osama bin Laden was killed.



Since then, his constant meme has been “caving” or wishing that Obama had pushed Democratic principles, and insinuating that Obama is a Republican at heart.



Singularly oxymoronic from a man who openly supports the death penalty, who’s on record as being anti-union (please, the attention paid by Maher to the Wisconsin debacle was fashion-following only), who’s against the NEA, who defends Israel in every corner, who starfucks Bibi Netanyahu, and who doesn’t have a problem with American citizens getting assassinated without due process.



Bill Maher says Obama is a Republican at heart.



As for the President not promoting Democratic principles, I presume Bill hasn’t heard about the following:-



■- The Lily Ledbetter Act (ensuring equal pay for women doing the same work as men – but wait! Bill Maher’s got a sexist problem with women).


■- The Matthew Shepherd Hate Crime Act (but wait! In 2007, no less than Alan Simpson, ripped Bill a new asshole, when he made an untimely gay joke, to which Simpson took offense)


■- The Dodd-Frank Act (but wait! Bill wholeheartedly approves of BFF’s Arianna Huffington’s entry into the Wall Street arena)


■- The Affordable Care Act (but wait! Bill’s on record as being against anything like a Congressional Act which regulates healthcare)


■- Repeal of DADT (enacted by the man Bill would crawl over broken glass to interview, Bill Clinton)


■- Pushing for the repeal of DOMA (another Clinton accomplishment)


There are other things. Bill, like most of his ilk, failed to see that the compromise secured by agreeing to extend the Bush tax cuts for 2 years, contained many valuable benefits for the unemployed, the poor, the working poor and small businesses. But Bill wouldn’t see these things, simply because he has no occasion to think about them. He simply isn’t concerned. And, by the way, just to detract from Bill’s constant meme of Obama being a bad negotiator, the tax cut compromise was negotiated by Joe Biden.



And this week he’s back, singing the same old song of Obama disappointment on Lawrence O’Donnell’s MSNBC show, when in reality, he was conflicted to the point of confusion. On the one hand, Bill understands very well that the President has to react the way he does at various times because he’s contending with an Opposition who’ve made no secret of the fact that their aim is to destroy Barack Obama – as a President, as a politician and as a man. And yet, he undermines the President in the next breath, by insinuating that he was naive to want bipartisan cooperation, that he was needy in “wanting the Republicans to like him,” that he was a bad negotiator (yet again) and was caving to their demands by not demanding revenues in exchange for spending cuts (when it was Harry Reid, who famously caved in this instance, after the Republicans had walked out on the Presidential negotiations).



Finally, by beginning his interview with O’Donnell with such an infamous qualitative statement as “I like Obama BUT …” he simply reveals that he doesn’t like the President at all, which indicates that Maher is either stupid enough not to have listened to the President at all during either the campaign or his early months in office or that he’s enough of a shallow starfucker to herd-follow the Professional Left shills who gratuitously criticize absolutely everything this President does or doesn’t do which doesn’t meet with their high purist standards, in an attempt to grift a spare buck and some free publicity.



Because I’ve heard him speak eloquently and intelligently in defence of this President and because he was still astute enough to realise that something as straightforward as increasing the debt ceiling (a procedure in which no President in recent history has had to involve himself directly) is a manouevre to destroy the country’s economy in an attempt to bring down one man, I believe the latter.



Like his mommy-figure, Huffinton, Bill’s all about self-promotion and getting as much attention as possible. And he wants to play with the big kids, be in with the in crowd. It’s cool in Bill’s world to be a Progressive hating on the black man in the White House, and when Bill derides the stupidity of Americans and manages to convince the dittoes who follow him religiously that he’s a Progressive who’s OK with the death penalty and who’s not ok with defending labour through unions, then he’s laughing all the way to the bank at such singular inability to think critically; but he’s not going to complain if it makes him some money.



At the end of his interview with O’Donnell this week, Lawrence asked Bill if there were even a remote part of him who was hoping for a default on the national debt for comedic purposes. Bill replied that he had money; even he wouldn’t want to see that happen. But I have a sneaking suspicion that he’d like to see this President fail and a Republican in Office in 2012.



After all, a Republican in the White House is just so much better for comedy.

One Man's Racism Is Another Man's Comedy

There's a Facebook friend in my social network, from Denver, Colorado, a man of the Left, who insists that race isn't a factor with the Left's so-called disillusionment with the President.

I disagree.

Of course, race factors into the Left's perception of the President and his performance, as much - if not more, in a different way - than it does on the Right. It was always going to factor. If Hillary Clinton had won the nomination and the election, the question of gender and her response to certain situations based on the fact that she was a woman, would always be cause for comment and speculation. Certainly, Jack Kennedy's Catholicism and its adherence to the supremacy of Rome, was a mitigating factor for some during his brief Administration.

This is a seminal Presidency, the first time an African-American is Commander-in-Chief.

Having come of age during the Seventies, when the newly-born Progressives were driving the agendae of the Democratic Party with their quest for ensuring equality through Affirmative Action, I watched, often from the sidelines, when the first woman or the first African-American man (or woman) ascended to some post or position heretofore only inhabitable in the realms of the omnipotent white male. Suffice it to say, in each instance, that the performance standard was raised just enough, to ensure that the seminal appointment would either burn out in trying to achieve a success easily achievable by his or her white brethren, or fail. Few failed. Many achieved, but at a cost.

In those days, on the Right, you had administrators who hated the thought of having to compromise their sexism or racism (or both) and who could barely contain their disdain at having whom they considered to be lesser beings in positions of responsibility and authority. Those sorts were easily recogniseable.

Worse, were the supposedly enlightened people of the Left, the ones who went out of their way to refer to any female appointee as "Ms" or who made a great show of lunching with "the black guy" and showing friendly in the office - only to shake his head and tut-tut almost reprovingly each time the slightest error was made, often rolling his eyes as he glanced over his shoulder at the rest of the crew, the action wordlessly admitting, "See, I told you so. Have to show them everything."

And so they would hover. And explain. And assume. And breathe a sigh of relief when the woman or "the black guy" would move to a different department or job. Or he'd seethe silently, if such person deservedly got a promotion he had perceived to be his and his alone.

You can see this now.

We've been able to see it from the Right as far back as the Tea Party's inception in 2009. It was a poor masquerade to hide behind words like "socialist" or "communist" or "Marxist" or even "Nazi," especially when those words accompanied signs which depicted the President as an African tribal chief or a monkey.

But from the Left, it's revealed itself in stages and some subtely and by voices whom the media willingly identifies as "Progressive". Ah, but these voices made it abundantly obvious to the hoi polloi who hung on their every word, that their criticism of the President had everything to do with his "policy" and nothing to do with his race - which, of course, prompted that noted "policy" critic and Progressive, Glenn Greenwald, to begin almost immediately to refer to any of the President's supporters as "Obamalovers" and to use that phrase viciously and in such circumstances, that it wasn't difficult for anyone to realise that "Obamalover" was a euphemism for that timeworn old George Corley Wallace phrase of "n*ggerlover." Even Joan Walsh is using the same phrase with aplomb now, but Joan's racism is quickly becoming an open issue in many areas of the Left.

And as for Greenwald's Progressivism, this is the man who writes for the Koch-founded and funded Cato Institute. This is the man who openly embraces the Citizens United decision, who supports Gary Johnson for President of the United States, a man who wants child labor laws rescinded, who wants the Department of Education dismantled and the EPA finished. Yes, Greenwald, who doesn't vote and who never has, is an identifiable Progressive.

Ever since the beginning of this Administration, one of its most vociferous critics, Rush Limbaugh, hasn't been too good to bring race into the fray. He mocks the President and his family on this score from his radio pulpit on a regular basis, employing stereotypical voices and musical soundbytes. Rightwing personalities have created pictures of the White House lawn turned into a watermelon patch.

All of this is disgusting and openly racist and has been decried as such by people from the Left and by some on the Right who still retain a conscience and a modicum of common sense.

But what happens when this sort of thing emanates from the Left?

Well, then, it becomes comedy.

How is Bill Maher's repeated reference to the President as "President Sanford and Son" any different from Limbaugh's depiction as such, using the Sanford and Son music as a backdrop to his criticism? Fred Sanford, a comic figure, was the quintessential lazy and feckless black man, unable to come to terms with modern life, a bumbler, who witlessly called upon a higher power (his dead wife) whenever his luck ran out.

Rush can ride that pony with impunity. Such tastelessness is what is expected from someone who joked that he'd like to own an NFL franchise because he fancied owning some black men. But Bill Maher regularly identifies himself as a "Progressive." How does he tie in a Sanford depiction of a President whom, at various times when the political fashion dictates, he perceives to be weak? Why "President Sanford and Son" instead of "President Barney Fife," another bumbler and stumbler, who happened to be white?

Then there's the disappointment that the stereotype hasn't been fulfilled. Throughout the Gulf Crisis, Maher and his cronies screamed for the angry black man to emerge. Today's radical chic, many of whom were in middle school watching Rowan and Martin's Laugh-In, still think of a black man as a cross between Clarence Williams III playing Linc in The Mod Squad and Stokely Carmichael; everybody else was either Flip Wilson, Bill Cosby or Diahann Carroll playing Julia.

Maybe this is why, during the summer of 2010, Maher whined during a monologue that when he voted for Obama, he thought he was voting for a real black man, a mothafucka gangsta who'd strike fear into the Cabinet by pounding the table with his fist, then opening his jacket to reveal a gun on his hip. Instead of "President Sanford and Son," we now get "President Clarence Carmichael" with a soupcon of Mister Tibbs. So Bill voted for John Shaft and got Cliff Huxtable, which subsequently allowed him - not once, but twice - to declare the President a "pussy" on national television, once on Fareed Zakaria's program in November 2010, and then on his own show some two weeks ago.

Mark Halperin describes the President as a "dick" and gets an indefinite suspension, and rightly so. Bill Maher calls the President a "pussy" and gets laughter.

Go figure.

Ah, but Bill's a comedian. He's a wannabe political pundit who's invited on any and all political opinion shows to talk politics, but when something like this occurs - hey, he's a comedian. It's for laughs, folks.

Like Jon Stewart, who's an acknowledged comedian, but whom people really do consider a newsman or a political pundit. So when Stewart, when satirizing African-American Republican Presidential candidate Herman Cain, by using a voice straight from Amos'n Andy, is surprised when Cain considers this racist, I'm surprised that Stewart is surprised.

Herman Cain has a Southern accent - which, I presume, Stewart, who was educated in Virginia, is channelling. But I wonder how coincidental it is that Stewart's Southern accent, employed for his Cain satire, sounds suspiciously like that of Kingfish Stevens, who - like Fred Sanford - came to represent a feckless, less-than-honest and lazy portrayal of a black man?

I am not saying Stewart is racist or even knowingly so. With Maher, I have my doubts. He's too much the Left Coaster and also has too many Rightwing sympathies (death penalty, racial profiling, anti-union) and associations (Arianna Huffington, Darrell Issa, Bill Frist), that a thinly disguised veneer of racism wouldn't surprise me in the least.

And when this is the case amongst those whom we deem "our own" on the Left, we have to acknowledge our shortcomings too; because I've always perceived the Left to have the same problem with the Obama Presidency as Scarlett had with Prissy. Prissy was the recalcitrant slave who just wouldn't do what Miss Scarlett said until Miss Scarlett snapped and slapped her, which is what I get the impression the Professional Left and their sheeple would like to do with this recalcitrant President, who just doesn't do as they say when they say and how they say.

This attitude is summed up brilliantly by the blogger rootless_e, writing in The People's View about Paul Krugman's litany of disillusionment with the Obama Presidency (which Jonathan Alter in his book The Promise puts down to the fact that Krugman has been angling for a Cabinet post since 1992 and hasn't secured one):-

...I have no more patience for "progressives" who want to tell the President and the rest of us us what to say and how to talk - and that's the underlying substance of Professor Krugman's critique, the failure of the President to stick the script that the progressives have written. The President, however, is not Mr. Krugman's graduate assistant and he's not the errand boy.

It's as I've always said: The Right don't like the fact that there's a black man in the White House who isn't serving coffee, and the Left doesn't like the fact that there's a black man in the White House who's smarter than they are and who doesn't do what they order.

There's Nothing Worse Than a Starfucking Ratfucker

I see Bill Maher's following this week's fashion of Obama-bashing again, in the wake of Chris Matthews's, Ed Schultz's and Rachel Maddow's expert analysis of the President's Afghanistan speech and hot on the heels of latent adolescent hissyfitting at Netroots Nation. Bill wants to be relevant, so he's revving up his old chestnut of "Obama the pussy," so it won't be long before he reaches into his repertoire to start musing about Obama not being black enough to suit Bill's stereotypical tastes, as past remarks have shown that Bill views black men like the President to be ineffectual and bumbling Fred Sanford types, instead of pistol-packing ghetto gangstas whom Bill purports to admire.

Nope, the President is a pussy who panders to people he should be opposing. In Bill's adolescently stagnated mind, Obama wants the likes of John Boehner to like him, so they agree to play golf. Ne'mind the fact that no less than LBJ had a round of golf with the Republican Senate leader, Everitt Dirksen, which resulted in Dirksen coming onside for Civil Rights' legislation.

Bill joined the Progressive chorus of "Obama Caving" when the President effected a compromise with the Republicans which saw tax cuts for the wealthy extended until 2012 in exchange for legislation which would help the unemployed, the poor and the working poor - but then, the affluent, educated and elite Progressives of the Left and Northeastern Coasts have given scant thought in the past forty years to the working classes and the working poor. To effetes like Bill, they're the hayseed inhabitants of Flyover country and inbred Deliverance shitkicking neo-Confederates of the red South. Of course, no mention was made either of the fact that the President's "caving" enabled DADT to be repealed, ensured passage of the First Responders' Bill as well as START.

Bill likes to identify himself as a Progressive, but he is anything but. As much as he calls the President out for being a fraudulent black man, Bill's pretty much a fraudulent Progressive - in fact, he's whiffingly close to being outed as a Republican.

Let's take a look:-

Bill is a strong supporter of the Death Penalty.
Bill is a vociferous supporter of Israel, as strong a supporter of Israel as either Sarah Palin or Glenn Beck.
Bill is vehemently anti-Muslim. He's truly alarmed that one of the most common names for a male child in Britain is Mohammed. He fears the West being overrun by Islamic hordes, and he's actually gone on record as saying that whilst all Muslims are not terrorists, if you're a terrorist, you're probably a Muslim.
Bill supports privatisation of Social Security and has often stated this. In fact, in an earlier program this year, he illustrated by a plate of food just how many "entitlements" should be up for trimming in any government budget - chief amongst those, being Social Security and Medicare.
Bill is anti-union. He crossed the picket lines during the writers' strike of 2007 and since then has refused to employ any writer who belongs to a professional union. In a show airing March 13, 2009, he slated the teaching unions and unions in general. Curiously, when it became fashionably de rigueur for the Professional Left to decamp to Wisconsin in light of Governor Scott Walker trampling on the collective bargaining rights of white-collar public sector unions, Bill added his voice; but it's interesting to note that neither Bill nor MSNBC's biggest proponents of unions, Ed Schultz and Rachel Maddow, have yet to discuss the blue-collar Boeing workers' dispute in Washington state. The only people fighting for their rights are the National Labor Relations Board and the President - but since the President, in Bill's and other peoples' views, has neither accomplished anything of note nor is capable of doing so, this isn't even worth a newsworthy mention.
In an interview aired in October 2009 with Bill Frist, Bill infamously blurted out that he didn't want government controlling his healthcare, after spending all that current season paying lip service to the sainted public option.
Bill's BFF is corporate media whore and Queen Ratfucker, Arianna Huffington - she who famously snookered the Left and the Left's media into believing her to be the champion voice for Progressives everywhere, even when she was openly undermining the President from as early as March 2009. For all Bill affects to disdain all things corporate, he literally bowed from the waist in hommage to Arianna's mega-million deal with AOL. This is the same Arianna Huffington who dismissed the legions of unpaid and unknown bloggers to whom she offered a platform more wantonly than Marie Antoinette dismissed the French peasantry as unimportant.
Bill pals around and is far too cosy with the likes of Darrell Issa, another bosom chum who sucks at the toxic tit of Arianna. In fact, Bill refers to Issa as "our Darrell Issa." This is the same Darrell Issa, auto thief, insurance fraudster, arsonist and posessor of illegal firearms, who declared Barack Obama to be the most corrupt President ever to inhabit the Oval Office. Issa is a staple on Bill's show.
Bill is against funding for the National Endowment for the Arts and NPR.
For most of 2009 and 2010, Bill referred to the President derisively as "Barry," a term used almost exclusively by the ageing, disaffected and disparaging group of white men known as Teabaggers.
Bill not only invites Andrew Breitbart onto his panel, but he appears to defend him when he's there and gives him credence as a bona fide journalist. On Breitbart's second appearance, Carl Sagan's widow confronted him about his misrepresentation of Shirely Sherrod, only to have Breitbart turn to Bill and remind him that Bill had promised him that race as a subject would not be raised on the show. Bill was forced to agree and apologise for Sagan's widow's outburst. Breitbart appeared earlier this year on Real Time along with liberal writer and broadcaster, Laura Flanders, and Bill gave Breitbart a lot of rein and appeared to treat Flanders as highly irrelevant and a nuisance.
For all he pays lip service to wanting to pay higher taxes, the truth is that Bill probably pays a lot less tax than he should. He owns two multi-million dollar properties in the Brentwood section of Los Angeles - his home and the house next door, which he treats as a guest house. These registered owner of these two properties is a charity called The Odie Trust. The Odie Trust, named for one of Bill's dogs who died, is a paper charity only, with Bill Maher listed as CEO and Secretary. As headquarters of a registered charity, these properties are not subjected to property tax laws in the state.
Sound like a state-of-the art Progressive to you? I would say that Bill sounds pretty damned Republican to me. Truth is, Bill is whatever happens to be the fashion of the moment. If he were a responsible political wonk, he'd realise that because of whatever reason, we're saddled with a Republican House of Representatives, which means that because fiscal legislation - like the budget and the debt ceiling kerfuffle - must originate with this lot of poseurs and grandstanders. This is where jobs' legislation starts also, but like everyone else and his dog, the Congress, in general, likes to heap the majority of what they should be doing onto the President.

If Bill had the audacity and prescience of mind to listen and really wanted to establish himself as someone of note in commentary, he would be making mincemeat of the fact that no less than Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, was brutally honest in describing the Hill Republicans' agenda: to ensure that Barack Obama is a one-term President. Nothing else mattered.

And if Bill were truly perspicacious (and, believe me, in this instance, it's not hard), he'd easily see how the House Republicans are stitching varous members of the Progressive caucus up like the proverbial kipper. McConnell, again, pointed this out this week, when he revealed that, were a Republican President in the White House, none of this showhorse, symbolic, repudiative legislation over Libya would ever have been introduced. In fact, McConnell reiterated, there were any number of Republicans in the Senate and in the House during Dubya's tenure, who were opposed to his antics in the Middle East; yet they kept their mouths shut and sat on their hands in the interest of party loyalty - something which is sadly lacking amongst the Democrats.

The House Republicans find it easy enough to stroke the narcissistic ego of Little Man Syndrome sufferer Dennis Kucinich and big up big mouth Peter Di Fazio to the extent that these two have become the biggest Democratic tools in the Republican toolbox. Kucinich shouldn't feel ashamed when his calls for impeachment and his judicial suit of the President makes its way into Republican party political messages in 2012.

And when Bill Maher whines that the President doesn't do anything, someone who knows better needs to remind Bill, who purports to be a student of history, that the President doesn't legislate. Congress does, and that for the better part of our nation's history, legislation has meant debating, discussion and compromise.

Like a lot of Bill's ilk, he voted for the black guy because it was fashionable, it elevated his street cred and made him feel better about himself as a "Progressive." But inasmuch as a lot of people found politically on the Right, who abhor the thought of a black man in the White House, Bill, like a great many of the patronising, affluent and white Progressives on the Left, are singularly uncomfortable with a black man in the White House, who is smarter than they are, and who doesn't do what they say to do.

The danger lies in people like Bill, who hide behind the comedian curtain, but who occupy a podium which garners the ear of a lot of people too lazy or unable to think critically for themselves; and therein lies the danger of the starfucking ratfucker.

The Sheen Smokescreen

Sometimes, living abroad has its advantages, even in the age of the Internet.

For example, I’m probably the only American in the world who doesn’t know exactly what’s been happening with Charlie Sheen. I haven’t a clue, and I suppose he doesn’t either; but whilst I caught rumblings in the background and tabloidesque headlines here and there on various internet sites, I truly don’t know what all the fuss is about and – quite frankly – I don’t care.

Here’s what I do know about Charlie Sheen:-

- He’s Martin Sheen’s son. I’ve always liked Martin Sheen.

- He’s Emilio Estevez’s brother.

- He starred in Platoon back before Oliver Stone was Oliver Stone and did a good job.

- He starred in Wall Street with Michael Douglas and did a good job.

- Now he’s on Two and a Half Men, which is shown here in the UK on an obscure channel at an obscure hour, and no one watches it enough to talk about it.

And that’s all I know about him, except he seems to have gone off the rails a bit, or at least enough to make the 24/7 guys obsess about him ad nauseam. He seems to have given various and sundry interviews to various and sundry talking heads on various and sundry morning programs and said unusual things.

I haven’t paid attention to the obsessing because it doesn’t interest me. Sheen’s got a problem of sorts – either emotional or psychological – and that’s his business. If he wants the public to know about it, that’s his business too; but I think it’s kind of creepy the way the media seem to have taken up residence on this subject, from all angles. Last week, Lawrence O’Donnell even spent twenty minutes of his MSNBC program evaluating the Sheen phenomenon as though it were a controversial and recently announded political principle. I know O’Donnell’s show is going through adjustment problems in the wake of KO’s departure, but it really is beneath the intellectual calibre of someone like Lawrence O’Donnell to rake over the coals of another man’s emotional breakdown on what is supposed to be a political analysis program.

That’s political, not psychological.

You know, fifty years ago, if something like this happened to a leading television actor, he would have retreated behind his gated home, and his publicist and the network for which he worked would have reported him to have been suffering from exhaustion or something of the sort. Three hundred years ago, inmates in local insane asylums were hung outside windows in cages in order that passersby might be entertained. Today, we watch people like Charlie Sheen break down and do and say silly things on television, being interviewed by network newspeople.

I know the news media obsessed in the extreme two years ago at the sudden death of Michael Jackson, but Jackson was a star of international repute and consequence. He was relatively young, and his death was sudden. He’d been a driving force in popular music. Still, the attention and obsession lavished on him were too much.

Then, there was balloon boy.

What’s peculiar about the Sheen situation is that it’s being used so much on so many overtly political programs as a valid topic of discussion, I can’t help but wonder why it’s being discussed instead of something else. And it is almost as though it’s being used as a smokescreen in order to avoid discussion of something more controversial.

Sheen’s dominated headlines on various programs whilst public sector workers have had their collective bargaining rights wiped off the slate in Wisconsin. Libya’s boiling over, while the media obsesses about Charlie Sheen. There’ve been earthquakes in New Zealand and now Japan, the latter worse than the former. And Congress have sat around whining and whingeing and doing nothing of what they’re supposed to be doing.

I use Bill Maher‘s Real Time to gauge a lot of what’s going on in the political spectrum. For two weeks now, the main topic of discussion on Real Time, entering a mention into every conversation, has been Charlie Sheen. This past week, Bill even managed to make an analogy of Sheen to Sarah Palin.

What I really want to know is simply what’s being hidden behind the Sheen smokescreen, and why has it been constructed? My guess would be that it’s yet another diversion for a public, both Right and Left, who are totally devoid of the ability to think critically. So when the media finally decide to let go of Charlie Sheen and allow him to deal with his many problems in the privacy he deserves, both sides will be able to turn, yet again, to the Obama-baiting they love so dearly, guided by the media talking heads they trust so much.

Bill Maher's Big Lie Contribution?

I’m an atheist, but I’m pretty tolerant in my non-belief. I don’t mind people of faith, as long as they don’t start trying to convince me that their way is the right way. Conversely, I don’t try to impose my non-belief on others. It works for me, but I’m cognizant of the fact that some people derive comfort and strength from faith and religious practice.

I also realise that our Constitution stipulates complete religious freedom. We are free to worship where and how we like, or not to do so, if we so choose. And this selfsame document precludes anyone being denied a job or profession based on his faith, or lack of. Put simply, a person’s religious convictions or lack of such convictions, shouldn’t matter in any walk of life or in the pursuit of any profession, even unto the office of President of the United States.

I get, as I’m sure many people do, the nuance behind many people on the Right thinking that the President is a Muslim. Not only is this a fear inculcated by repercussions surrounding events which happened on Bush’s watch, it’s fear of “the other,” encouraged by the Rightwing media machine.

Our President certainly is different than any other we have previously had. He looks different. His name is different. I can just about remember something similar occurring during President Kennedy’s term, when people worried that the President’s Catholic religion would mean he would defer to Rome first and the United States second. That’s a pretty silly fear to have, but we’ve not seen any Catholics in the Oval Office since, albeit the men who are one and two heartbeats away from the President practice that faith.

Like me, Bill Maher is a non-believer, and he doesn’t stint on criticism of anyone who adheres to a faith. People of faith, Bill says, are deluded. More than that, he’s archly critical of that Rightwing demographic, who propagate the notion that the President is Muslim; and well he should be critical. It’s an assumption based on nothing more than Big Lie propaganda.

The Big Lie is a propaganda technique, introduced by Adolf Hitler and refined to an art by Josef Goebbels. It’s a merciless and pejorative public relations operation meant to eviscerate a targeted opponent. It’s basically a lie, so totally outlandish as to be unbelieveable; but repeated enough times, more and more people begin to accept it as the truth.

The obvious Big Lie of the 20th Century was the one which led to over 6 million people being gassed to death during World War II, when the German people were convinced that the core cause of all their problems was down to people of the Jewish faith, living amongst them. Now we have to suffer the Right, aided and abetted by Fox News, casting doubt on, not only our President’s citizenship, but also his religious credentials. It’s also demonisation of one religion in the land where the concept of “freedom of religion” was fostered. Linking the President with the Muslim faith links him with those people whom many Americans identify as having been behind the single biggest terrorist attack in history – and we’ve all been told how Obama pals around with terrorists.

On Friday night’s Real Time, Bill Maher managed to get into a contretemps of sort with his guest, Dr Cornel West, when Bill remarked casually that he didn’t think Obama was a Christian. He elaborated the point by reminding Dr West that the President’s mother was a secular humanist, and he thought the President was as well. Never mind the appearance at the Prayer Breakfast, where the President took advantage of the situation to speak openly about his faith. That was all for show; and furthermore, continued Bill, he didn’t believe Obama “struggled” with same-sex marriage either.

OK, I know what Bill thought or intended to mean. Maybe he was trying to convey to the super-cool ueber Left, of which he’d like us to believe he is a part, the Left which derides and looks down upon religious faith, that the President really is “one of us” – nudge, nudge, wink, wink. And, oh, he was pretending to be a centrist too, it seems, although Bill did admit that Obama was a pragmatist.

But in saying something off-the-cuff and totally unfounded on any fact, not only does he further establish the President as being part of “the other” syndrome, he also insinuates that the President is a liar.

On the one hand, he excoriates the fact that many on the Right refuse to accept the President’s word that he is not a Muslim, whilst on the other, Bill, himself, refuses to accept the President’s eloquent declaration of faith – something which, incidentally, our Constitution distinctly reiterates that he shouldn’t have to make at all. It shouldn’t make any difference to us what the President’s faith is or whether he follows any at all, as long as he governs well and responsibly; the President’s faith is his personal matter.

And whilst I do accept that, to some people, it matters a great deal that their leader believes in a higher being, I would imagine it would matter a lot more to these people, and indeed to all of us, if our leader were found to be openly lying and deceitful about that which he purports to believe, himself.

So, my question is this: Was Bill just trying, after months of subtle racist insinuations masked as comedy, to big the President’s cool and au courant credentials up to the shallow sheeple of the ueber Left, whom he’d formerly convinced of Obama’s “weakness,” or was he indulging in a little bit of the Big Lie, seeking to propagate “Obama atheism” as a counter-fear to the President’s supposed penchant for Islam? After all, the only thing worse than a Muslim, in some people’s eyes, is an atheist.

As Dr West succinctly observed, somebody’s wrong here.

Following the Rightwing Fashion

Living in the UK, I often say I’m five hours ahead and one day behind everyone else. Also, working a long day and catching up with news Stateside leaves me less time than I want to write about things I’ve read or seen.
I’ve only just caught up with watching Bill Maher’s Real Time from February 4th, and something Bill said on that program has stuck rigidly in my craw.

John Fund was a panelist that week, and the only Republican in a trio which included Rep Anthony Weiner from New York.

I would normally applaud Bill including Republican points-of-view in the program. I think it’s valid to hear the other side, even if one doesn’t agree with what they say. Although I’m normally pessimistic by nature, I sometimes come across a Republican/conservative who makes a good point – good enough to make me think. I also like to think that there are still reasonable and moderate Republicans somewhere out there, with whom the Democrats can cooperate in a civil and constructive fashion.

Conversely, I think the wingnuts need to be exposed for the fearmongerers that they are and for the irresponsible deceit they propagate. Therefore, a two-way discussion is always helpful.

I know there was a time when Bill moaned about being unable to attract viable Republican guests on his program, often bragging that they were afraid to appear, knowing that he would ask the questions others were afraid to ask, and that was true; but lately – at least since John Bolton’s last appearance in early 2010 – Bill’s been wont to give his Republican guests too much of a free and easy ride.

That Friday night, February 4th, as he took his place in the moderator’s seat, the first thing Bill did was apologise to John Fund, for his being the only Republican/conservative guest that evening and having to pit himself against two obvious Democrats on the panel. He went onto explain that they’d been recently trying to have at least two Republican guests on the show, but that particular week, they’d been unable to find a second.

That remark kick-started something in my brain. The previous week, Bill actually had a panel of three Republican/conservative guests, and thus far, this season, the Rightwing viewpoint has far out-weighed that of the Left. For too long on that program, anytime a Republican/Rightwinger (synonymous) appears, they dominate the discussion, interrupt, talk over others and are just generally rude.

And as for Bill, he either lets their comments ride or totally ignores them by cracking a bad joke.

At the beginning of the second half of the 2010 season, Andrew Breitbart was on the panel, along with Amy Holmes. This was fresh in the aftermath of the Shirley Sherrod escapade, but throughout the panel discussion, not a mention was made of either Sherrod or race in anyway … until Carl Sagan’s widow appeared as the mid-panel guest.

She was very quick off the mark to confront Breitbart about this incident. Breitbart almost stood up in his chair and quickly berated Bill, by reminding him that one of the pre-conditions to Breitbart’s appearance on the show was that there would be no mention of either Sherrod or racial issues. Bill mumbled a hasty agreement and moved onto the next topic.

W … T … F?

What happened to those questions other hosts were afraid to ask? And why did he feel it mete to apologise to John Fund for not being able to secure another Republican guest so Fund could feel good about safety in numbers?
Bill regularly complains about Obama’s “neediness” in pandering to the Republicans, ignorantly refusing to realise that, now that the House has a GOP majority – thanks in part to Bill’s reverse cheerleading efforts in convincing the lowest common denominator of the ueber Left that Obama was no different than Bush, that he was weak and a pussy – Obama has to reach agreement with this half of the bicameral legislature in order to govern effectively. He has that responsiblity, and so does the Speaker. And polls have shown increasingly that the voting public want to see compromise and cooperation, rather than stalemate and stagnation. Otherwise, why don’t we all go to hell in a handcart?

And whilst Bill complains about Obama’s pandering to the Right, he, himself, looks increasingly cosy in the company of such staunch Republicans as John Fund, Michael Steele and Darrell Issa. And this week, after regularly ranting against corporate welfare and the power and wealth of corporate power in the US, he bows from the waist to the Queen Mother of Corporate Media Whores, Whoreanna Fuckington, herself, with a softball interview which allowed her, not only to continue her abject participation in the Big Lie propagation concerning the President, but also to cherry-pick her chosen Messiah for the GOP Presidential nomination, John Huntsman.

Bill calls himself a Progressive, but he’s in favour of the death penalty, is anti-union in sentiment, doesn’t like federal funding of the National Endowment for the Arts, is virulently pro-Israel and has a fear of Islam and Muslims that’s almost palpable, considering his interview with Anderson Cooper last spring. All those sentiments sound pretty closet Republican to me.

Or maybe, since Whoreanna’s sold herself to the highest bidder and isn’t afraid to be photographed either clinching Newt or reclining comfortably into the arms of Darrell Issa, turning Right is now the fashionable thing to do for some dedicated followers of political fashion like Bill Maher.

Some would call it flip-flopping; others, hypocrisy. I say it’s chickens coming home to roost.

American Exceptionalism, American Nightmare

A couple of weeks ago, in the Overtime section of Real Time with Bill Maher, a viewer posed a question wondering how foreigners viewed "American Exceptionalism." When Bill read the question, Kim Campbell, ex-Canadian PM, smugly quipped, "Pretty dimly."





That remark niggled me more than just a little bit, not because it was uttered by a foreigner who chose to live in the United States, rather than her own country, but because her cute and clever reply and the ensuing discussion made obvious the fact that no one on the panel - and apparently not even Bill Maher - understood the real meaning of the phrase.





Rather than speaking of "American Exceptionalism" as de Tocqueville described the experience, they applied the purely Palinesque definition of the phrase - in other words, the "dumbass definition."





Well, why am I even surprised? I've spent the past thirty years, not only watching America and Americans devolve into a nation of dumbasses, fed on a supersized diet of instant gratification, with brains stultified to the point that critical thinking is an unfamiliar process being relegated to the evermore distant past, I've had to watch the UK and Europe bingefeast on an orgy of celebrity worship, reality television and trivial tat tarted up as bling.





In the ancient past - well, in the 1970s, that brilliant decade when college enrollment soared to dizzying heights, thanks to the social justice programs of Lyndon Johnson's era - when I was reading Alexis de Tocqueville in French for literary purposes and re-reading him in English as part of a history course, I was given to understand that "American Exceptionalism" derived from the fact that our country had a beginning unlike no other before it or since.





We were a nation founded on the ideals of freedom and liberty. That a fair few people in the country at the time of its founding were neither free nor equal was an oxymoron our fabled Founding Fathers pondered for a bit, but put aside in the contemporary necessity of founding a country. Black males, slave or free, were the equivalent of three-fifths of a white man. If you were a female, black or white, forget it. You didn't count. You answered to your nearest male relative or your master. If you were a black woman and misbehaved, you could be sold or beaten or both; if you were a white woman and misbehaved, you could be beaten or committed or both. And from the very beginning, it was obvious that the Founding Fathers, men who, in Europe, would have found themselves amongst the highest echelon of aristocracy, intended that only the elite should rule - white men over a certain age, owning a certain amount of land or collateral and educated to the highest level.





Not many people know that - well, certainly not many Tea Partiers. People like their revered Founding Fathers would be denigrated as elitists by the Tea Party today.





When de Tocqueville spoke about "American Exceptionalism" in the early part of the 19th Century, when suffrage had just been extended to all white men over the age of twenty-one and people were beginning to push their brand of civilisation Westward, he spoke about the coalescence of a nation of people from various ethnic backgrounds and religions, come together under a tent labelled "Liberty" and functioning as one.



More than just a Sputnik moment, for de Tocqueville, who'd come from a nation of homogenous people, all of whom spoke a language influenced by none other than Latin, all practicants of the same religion and viewing anyone of a different denomination as heretical, a nation whose social life was strictly bounded by class, convention and privaleges derived from a heriditary ruler, this was really e pluribus unum in the flesh.



Social mobility was such that a man really could be born in a log cabin, into a family of illiterates, and ascend to the highest office in the land, by will of the people and not by birthright.



This was real American Exceptionalism, that out of many, could come one that functioned as a nation based on Constitutional rule and not religion, geographic or demographic type. It made us different from the rest of the civilised world. Not better. Different.



Lately, however, at least during the past three years, American Exceptionalism has been misinterpreted to mean we, as a nation, are better than any other nation in the world. Our people are better. They're smarter, they're stronger, and because of this, we're owed, if not respect, then at least obeisance, as Americans, as the propagators of freedom and democracy, Yankee-style.



This deliberate misniterpretation of American Exceptionalism is a particular pet hate of mine, especially when it's used by people who should know better or by people who do know better, but use the incorrect interpretation to further their own agenda.



So rather than bask in the fact that she''d scored a petty point against Americans in their own country with a subtle put-down, Kim Campbell should have enlightened us by reminding everyone that American Exceptionalism means we differ from other countries in our origins, alone, and not by our superiority. And Bill Maher should have reminded people that each country in the world is exceptional in that it celebrates, good and bad, its own unique history. This is what the President addressed when he spoke of American Exceptionalism as opposed to British or French or Russian Exceptionalism, not any sense of superiority, but a sense of individual difference as nations based on their common history shared. It was a call to embrace and envelope immigrants into a nation's culture, making them and their heritage a part of a shared history as well.



For de Tocqueville, the single defining element of American Exceptionalism was the sense of being included, whereas anything out of the ordinary in the Old World was to be excluded and avoided - and shunted over to the New World, if at all possible.



And now, with the news that Arianna Huffington, that "doyenne of the Left" has sold The Huffington Post to AOL for a neat $315 million dollars and a position as CEO Queen Regnant of an internet empire, we have no less than Chris Matthews lauding her as the embodiment of the American Dream fulfilled, when an immigrant can decamp to our shores and in a lifetime reach the top of the heap.



But how many immigrants arrive in this country, travelling First Class (on Concorde at the time), buy a condo on New York's Upper West Side, join a gym frequented by Baba Wawa and ingratiate herself into a friendship with the same, then mosey on out to California, effect to be befriended by the Gettys, who introduced her to the ubiquitous billionaire oilman husband (who happened to be gay)?



Just your average immigrant tale. America's the land of the rich and the grifting and anyone blatantly shameless enough to promote their own brand.



Arianna's Old World decadence. She's the courtesan who passed herself from man to man along the way, each one successively wealthier and more powerful, each offering her a leg up for a leg over, leaving her other leg free to kick them to the curb when it suits her to inch up the ladder on her back. But at the end of the day, the ultimate media whore has become the ultimate corporate whore; and after all, "courtesan" is just a euphemism for a woman who sells herself to the highest bidder for her own advancement.



To laud such a person's achievements as the ultimate immigrant's dream is irresponsible.



Since August, she's been photographed in a bear hug with Newt Gingrich whilst on vacation in Amalfi and nestling into Darrell Issa's corporate shoulder during a weekend in Las Vegas. Does this sound like something a "doyenne of the Left" would do? Besides, she's now walking back the idea of The Huffington Post as the Progressives' Bible, instead saying she's interested more in a centrist approach to politics.



I guess the President made the centre sexy in his State of the Union address, except that he managed successfully to tug the centre more to the Left, where it belongs. Arianna's "centre" is the Overton Window facing Right, where she's always been more comfortable, in the land of titled Eurotrash slurping martinis at cocktail parties and watching the sun set over Lalaland, talking of stocks, bonds and corporate mergers and counting money doffed in offshore accounts and derived from tax cuts.



Pardon my cynicism and disbelief that anyone could believe someone who voted for George Bush twice could wake up on the morning after his re-election and declare herself firmly in the Progressive mold, but maybe Arianna's return to her neocon roots is a blessing in disguise for the Left who supported her.



Maybe with Madame, will go the pejorative idea of elitism that she represents in the eyes of those people whom the real Republican Party have conned into voting against their interests all the time. Maybe Arianna can return the Republican Party to the confines of the boardrooms instead of the barn rooms, and maybe then, the Democratic Party can remember its role as the defender of the working class and the working poor.



Then maybe we'll see some true, Progressive change in the implementation of social justice programs.



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